Schmidt described a few quick problems he encountered during his trip (officially part of a delegation led by former UN Ambassador and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson). For example, North Korea has a 3G network that is a joint venture with an Egyptian company. But currently this does not allow users to have a data connection and use smartphones, despite estimates that a million and a half phones and counting are operating within the country, according to Schmidt.

Schmidt commented on the apparent supervision that looms over any in-country Internet users ("There is a supervised Internet and a Korean Intranet... it would be easy to connect these networks to the global Internet"). And he noticed country software and technology based on open source software ("mostly Linux") that wasn't quite open: "It was obvious to us that access to the Internet and all of this was possible for the government, the military, and universities, but not for the general public."

Schmidt ended his take by sharing how his delegation tried to convince North Korea about the future pitfalls associated with its current setup. "As the world becomes increasingly connected, the North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world and their economic growth," Schmidt wrote. "It will make it harder for them to catch up economically." In his eyes, North Korea's hopes rely on the Internet's growth coming from its people, but more open access has to come first.

Schmidt's statement can be read in full here. His daughter Sophie joined him in the delegation, and she also recently took to Google to offer her perspective (as noticed by CNET). Her post—entitled "It might not get weirder than this"—dives deep into personal aspects of the trip while also offering a less PR-speak take on the state of technology and Internet within North Korea. So you can get firsthand accounts of how unbearably cold the country is or how the duo left all their technology and "killing devices" (seriously, that's an official government form requirement) in China for safety purposes. As for the younger Schmidt's quick take on the state of North Korean Internet: "It's like The Truman Show, at country scale."